Former NSW Liberal minister John Sidoti charged with corruption

If former NSW Liberal Party minister John Sidoti was hoping the 2022 corruption findings against him by the Independent Commission Against Corruption might be a thing of the past, he’ll be disappointed.

Four years after the corruption watchdog handed down damning findings against the former member for Drummoyne, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has charged him with misconduct in public office.

The corruption findings arose from Sidoti’s dealings in relation to his family’s commercial properties in Five Dock, which the ICAC found he repeatedly tried to have rezoned to his family’s benefit by unduly trying to influence the local Liberal councillors.

But corruption charges aren’t the only recent bad news for Sidoti. Within days of being served a subpoena to answer to the DPP’s misconduct charge an application for state significance approval to fast-track the approval process for a block of apartments on his family’s Five Dock site was knocked back by the Housing Delivery Authority.

The proposal was for a 30-storey tower of 300 apartments, retail outlets, and food and drink premises in the Five Dock town centre, on Great North Road, with 10 per cent of the apartments set aside for affordable housing for 15 years.

The 2000 square metre site is made up of six properties, of which four are owned by family trusts and companies linked to Sidoti’s parents, Catherine and Richard Sidoti, as well as Sidoti and his wife Sandra Sidoti. Two of the properties are owned by Charbel Tannous, the managing director of plumbing and construction company Kwikflo Group.

The site has been at the centre of the ICAC investigation into Sidoti since 2021 when former Labor leader Jodi McKay referred the matter to the corruption watchdog.

In its findings handed down in mid 2022, the ICAC found the then-Liberal Party minister had persistently emailed, telephoned and sought meetings with Liberal Party councillors in the City of Canada Bay Council in the lead-up to every council meeting at which relevant planning matters were to be discussed.

Sidoti also directed the councillors’ attendance at meetings, berated them for non-attendance, and implied their positions on council could be threatened if they did not advance the positions he wanted.

When the councillors refused to comply, Sidoti withdrew his endorsement for those of them who were contending the 2017 council election.

The inquiry heard evidence of one incident in 2016 in which Sidoti encountered Liberal councillor Mirjana Cestar while exercising on the Bay Run, behaving towards her in an intimidating and threatening manner and threatened her position on council if she did not adopt his position on rezoning a block in Five Dock.

Sidoti claimed that at the time he was using his role as the local member to advocate for local businesses, but he failed to identify any of the business owners he was meant to be representing.

Instead, the commission found “that the outcomes he was pursuing were directed to the pursuit of his family’s property interests” and inconsistent with the public interest.

The day after the ICAC findings were handed down, then premier Dominic Perrottet said there was “no place for corruption in NSW parliament,” and contacted Sidoti to urge him to resign from parliament.

After quitting the Liberal Party Sidoti moved to the crossbench.

A court attendance notice shows Sidoti will face Downing Centre Local Court on July 16 on allegations he “wilfully misconducted himself without reasonable cause or justification by seeking to unduly influence the Liberal Party councillors” in a bid to achieve planning outcomes that would favour him and his family’s property interests in and around Five Dock.

The DPP’s charges also allege that Sidoti failed to disclose his personal interests to the councillors, and states that such serious misconduct merits criminal punishment. The ICAC did not recommend charges against others connected with Sidoti.

The Sidoti family have had an interest in the Five Dock site since 1992 when the family’s Deveme Pty Ltd trust purchased the Castro D’Oro function centre for $1.6 million. Sidoti’s parents remain the directors and shareholders of Deveme, but their children and spouses (including Sidoti) are among the ultimate beneficiaries.

The shopfront next door was added to the Deveme holdings in 2015 for $1.62 million, a third shopfront added in 2017 for $2.025 million and a fourth adjoining property purchased by a separate Sidoti family trust, called Anderlis Pty Ltd, in 2014 for $1.3 million.

Tannous owns two houses behind the shopfront properties, taking the combined site to more than 2000 square metres.

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